Back to yesterday. It was a very randomly fun day. I went disc golfing for the first time and it was so much fun. I went to a toy/collectables expo that came to LaPorte…check out my awesome haul:

I saw an original foam 2×4 from 1988 that was Hacksaw Jim Duggan’s trademark. I had it when I was like 7…7 year old Ben is tickled pink right now.

I bought it for 15 dollars. Here’s the only listing for one on Ebay:

33 year old Ben is tickled pink too! I have no idea if that’s accurate but I can’t find another one for sale online in my quick 2 minute Googling…so basically I’m a millionaire.

As for the other stuff that I took pictures of from yesterday:

Organized:

Dinner was really good. I made hummus crusted chicken breast with zucchini and yellow squash:

I’m pretty proud of that one.

Onto the crochetttttting:

I got decently okay at doing this:

I learned the real importance of tension/less tension on the yarn as you go, and what the most comfortable way to do that is for me:

So that was enough crocheting. Got invited to go Disc Golfing with my buddy Craig. He was nice enough to bring me a set of discs and everything. It’s pretty cool stuff. You basically throw long distance/medium distance/shorter distance frisbees for 18 holes of “golf” that are between 250 feet and 450 feet long each. Each hole ends with the frisbee sitting in a basket like this:

It’s the best walking exercise you can get in my opinion. It’s a semi-steady pace, hills and valleys…and it takes about 2 hours. Also, it’s competitive so you forget that you are actually doing something healthy.

After golf, I cooked that amazing dinner and then went to the Jaycees ugly Christmas sweater party…and I forgot to get myself a sweater. I was able to improvise. I stapled Christmas ornaments to a red work shirt and wore a green t-shirt underneath:

No, I didn’t staple them WHILE I was wearing the shirt.

It did cross my mind though.

So that was a busy day/night.

I woke up really, really sore. I forgot on this journey there have to be “rest” days as far as the exercise stuff is concerned or I’m going to break something. Yes, probably my vagina. Regardless, I woke up at 7:30 and just laid in bed planning a winter trip. I’m flying into Tampa, FL at the end of January for GASPARILLA. It’s a pirate festival. Read: drinking and parade and bad decisions.

I did my crochet…here’s how it’s going:

Yeah…something about not being good at crochet just said “Shave your beard”

I didn’t leave it like that, but I probably should have.

So now I’m creepy and clean shaven instead of being creepy and bearded.

I made an onion and garlic stuffed burger for dinner.

I got a burger stuffing thing a while back but I threw away the directions and I’m not using it correctly, oh well. It was still surprisingly good. I’ve included a picture of the “bun” which is a 100 calorie sandwich thin. I toss a 1/2 a serving of potato chips on the plate and add a few to the bun with a dab of bbq sauce for some texture and taste without sacrificing a bunch of calories. It tricks my dumb brain pretty well. Sargento pepper jack cheese is the best!

Organized another cabinet (added some supplements to the routine)

Random act of kindness cannot be discussed because someone may see it on here and that would ruin the surprise. They’ll find out Wednesday and then if I remember I’ll post about it. It’s no big deal but hopefully it makes her day happy.

Today, I was able to give a very genuine compliment to my friend Liz that I only see like 2 or 3 times a year. She’s always so well put together even though she has two kids and a pretty hectic life, and I told her that I thought so. That’s the best kind of checking off of a blog item. When I sit down to write, sometimes I just mentally go through my day to see if I can count anything random towards the blog goals and today I remembered complimenting her on her “put-together-ness”. The unforced compliments are always better than the “Shoot, I better use this opportunity to get that out of the way for the blog”.

The reason I saw Liz was that I was at the sporting goods store in town to purchase some goggles and swim trunks because I’m going to start swimming in the morning at the YMCA. Thank you to my comedian buddy Brian Johnson for coming up with a program for me to follow!

So tomorrow I’ll be doing this:

• Warmup
  • 4 x 25 swim
• Kick Set
  • take 15 seconds rest in between 25s4 x 25 w/ kickboard

    2 x 25 no kickboard

    4 x 25 w/ kickboard

    2 x 25 no kickboard

• Swim Set
  • 2 x 50 easy -30 seconds rest in between 50s4 x 50 medium -20 seconds rest

    5 x 50 medium-hard -15 seconds rest

• Cooldown
  • 1 x 100 very easy

I had improv rehearsal tonight. I’m forming an improv group with some other very talented people under the guidance of Bob from Disposable Improv over in Chesterton, IN. By “I’m forming”, I mean that Bob had the idea to form another troupe and asked me to be in it. On that note, If anyone doesn’t know by now, I put on two comedy shows a year and we give the profit to charity. February 7th is going to be the next show and it’s going to be IMPROV. Tickets are going on sale this week ONLINE so keep an eye out!

You can watch Whose Line episodes online and they are just fantastic.

I did everything else on the list. This includes flossing while listening to a new audio book (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less) while driving to Improv.

 Listening to a book about doing less while doing more is like using a book about procrastination to procrastinate. Did I mention how good I am at books? So good.

Last thing…I’m going to weigh in tomorrow to see how much if any pounds I’ve lost. That should be fun. GOODNIGHT!

I don’t remember hitting my alarm this morning, but there you have it. I was almost late to work. Woke up at 7:46.

7:47:

Luckily everything was fine once I got to work. Got the day started and then rearranged my day to stay a little later so I could actually go to the gym and swim.

I even remembered to grab a banana on the way out the door.

I’ve also started carrying a gallon of water with me and an old travel mug, pouring liberally throughout the day so I can make sure to flood my organs with the good stuff.

If you didn’t know I have a wonderful little condition called Gout…referred to as The Gout and made famous by Chris Farley and Adam Sandler.

More water equals less gout pain when losing weight, so I’m drinking as much as I can. I’m a believer that when your cells push fat out for your body to get rid of, uric acid (that causes gout) is filtered through your kidneys at a higher rate than normal and so more water kind of dilutes the amount of acid.

THIS IS NOT SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE. I’m almost sure of that, but I do know that more water equals less gout pain. So Imma be, Imma be, Imma, Imma, Imma be……well….drinking a lot of water.

So back to this morning at the gym. I said I’d do this until I finished it or until 45 minutes was up:

• Warmup
  • 4 x 25 swim
• Kick Set
  • take 15 seconds rest in between
  • 4 x 25 w/ kickboard
  • 2 x 25 no kickboard
  • 4 x 25 w/ kickboard
  • 2 x 25 no kickboard
• Swim Set
  • 2 x 50 easy -30 seconds rest in between 50s
  • 4 x 50 medium -20 seconds rest
  • 5 x 50 medium-hard -15 seconds rest
• Cooldown
  • 1 x 100 very easy

I got all the way to the 5×50…I did the first one and realized I was 40 minutes in…so I jumped to the cooldown. Still 850 meters isn’t bad for day one, at least I think. I’m no swimmer.

Swimming is such an amazing workout. I’m exhausted. I was never breathing super hard, but my muscles were super tired about 1/2 way through for sure.

On the days that I swim, I won’t be doing any other physical workouts. It’s a lot of work.

I haven’t had dinner yet, but I’m doing really well with the eating and such. Speaking of which, let’s just hop on this scale here and see where I’m at from starting a week ago at 302.

295.4

Not bad for the first week.

Here’a a funny story that I had forgotten about from last week:

On to the crochet! I set my alarm for 13 minutes tonight because I’m already running out of time to complete things tonight after staying later at work. Not waking up early enough REALLY throws this stuff out of whack.

ANNNND I did 30 minutes again.

Here’s what I can do now:

You might notice that I have a new crochet needle. I didn’t like the one that came with the started kit so I went back to my girl’s house today to pick out another one. Oh, I didn’t tell you guys? I have a girlfriend! Her name is Jo.

I maybe went a little overboard…

Susan is probably sitting on a pile of her crochet needle money cackling like a crazy person watching bumfights

But really, the new K-10.5 I bought has a more deliberate hook on the end and I just like it betOHMYGOD I’m a woman.

It’s cool, I have nice boobs.

Alright, it’s like 10:30 and if I want to get on the treadmill I have to go organize something and make dinner and get some sleep.

Random act of kindness today, a gentleman came into the pool area and all the lap lanes were occupied so I let him share my lane. I really didn’t want to because I’m all over the place and it’s narrow and awkward and what if he peed? But it was fine and that worked out well.

I’ve showered twice. I still smell like chlorine. My skin is itchy. I still smell like chlorine. Also, I don’t know if I told you, I still smell like chlorine.

I flossed today and there was barely any evidence of a bloody murder in my sink, so that’s probably a good thing. My fingernails are “long” enough that they are starting to feel strange and annoying when I catch them on my other fingers. Stupid fingers.

One last thing. Do yourself a favor and look at my buddy John Cessna’s yearly Christmas card. I co-starred in last years card and this year’s dropped today and already has more than 2.5 million views online:

CLICK HERE TO SEE JOHN’S CARD!

How awesome is that?

Here’s a link to the gallery where I’m in the card from last year:

LINK!

Today I:

Woke, treadmill, banana, 9 hours work, sandwich, floss, crochet, organize, Historic Preservation Committee meeting, stopped by my friend’s house, purchased a dumbell set, used that dumbell set, played with the dog, planned my day for tomorrow. Dinner is on the stove cooking up with some peppers (veggies), I’m going swimming tomorrow morning, I drank water all day and counted all my calories.

I got damn frustrated with my chrochet today because I got like 8 single stitches in and it knotted up. Instead of calmly detangling it. I pulled on it with man force. This was the result. I decided to stop there before I hung myself with the slipknot BECAUSE AT LEAST THAT PART IS SOLID.

This was the corner of my living room (it’s looked like this for about 6 months).

Those orange and white things are Snowball slingshots that I got for a buck a piece at a garage sale this summer and I’m PUMPED to use them. They are now in the closet where they should be. Those are some random Redbox movies I may have accidentally purchased over the years, along with a couple Guitar Hero guitars and some random movies/video games. In that stock…I’m ashamed of myself…I rented, forgot to return, and now OWN:

That’s right. The awful Kevin James saves the rec center movie.

I know Oprah, I know.

On the other hand, I never actually watched…does that make it better or worse? Who cares? No one? Cool. Moving on.

Here’s the after:

One Xbox controller and one copy of MacGruber that I need to return to my friend Brad.

Also in that movie? Val Kilmer.

I complimented 3 different people today. I think it’s becoming a habit, and I think that’s swell.

Also my RAOK took place today, but it’s between me and that person.

haha vag.

GOODNIGHT.

P.S. I tried to tag this post with a bunch of stuff through wordpress, I don’t really know what that does…does anyone else use wordpress enough to know what tags, categories I should be using? I’m just kind of throwing random things in there.

I woke up this morning in pain. Pretty significant pain. I’ve been running around and doing a LOT lately so it would make sense for one part of my body to get all pissy and throw a fit.

My pinky.

I have no idea how it happened, but it REALLY hurts. It makes typing slower than usual so I’m going to cut to the quick and hopefully have a bigger post tomorrow with pics and all that stuff.

Everything got done, I’m a flossing fool and exercise machine. Habits are forming and it’s bleeding into other areas of my life like taking fish oil every morning and not even thinking about fast food any more. I’m down about 10 pounds so far so everything is on the upside (besides this damn pinky).

Even crocheting hurt.

Hey Ben, have you ever injured yourself so much in one hand that you couldn’t enjoy a good crochet session?

Yep.

Sorry for the short update. Here’s some funny stuff for you to enjoy in my post’s absence:

And I’ll leave you for the night with a little inspiration that gets me through some tough times:

Woke. Banana. Worked. Food. Went Swimming. Flossed. Crochet. Organized. Created online ticketing for charity show. Went to the comedy club in South Bend to make fun of a movie in front of people. Eating/blogging now. Then crash hard and sleep forever.

It’s already 10:30.

I’ve realized that if I do anything significant (like something that takes 2-3 hours at night) then my blog is the thing that I can’t spend time on. It normally takes me an hour or more to craft my amazing posts. Tonight is a another speed round.

RAOK today, I agreed to MC a charity auction in January. FUN!

I THINK I’m chaining that thing into itself the right way, but I’m going to try it a different way tomorrow with another piece of yarn to see which way is the right way and which way looks like Opie from Family Guy did it.

I thought the dash of my truck could use some love. Forgot to take the “before” picture, but it wasn’t pretty.

Proof that I at least carry floss with me…

Check out that sweet fence and that sweet beware of dog sign and that sweet garage light and garage door. I’m such a baller, you guys.

The next charity show is going to benefit the actual theatre that lets us put the other charity shows on. It’s like charinception… charity for the people that help make charity happen. Charinception.

This time around I’m going to perform. It’s going to be an improv show with the amazing Disposable Theatre. These guys and gals are the real deal. So if you like shows like Whose Line is it Anyway, but want to see less talented people do it…BUY TICKETS!

Just kidding, you’ll laugh your ass off, I’m hilarious.

Here’s the link to purchase them right now online…this will be the 4th show we’ve done, and the first 3 have sold out, so I’m trying to keep that streak going!

BUY TICKETS FOR THE COMEDY SHOW!

I went over to South Bend for the Drop Comedy Club’s Christmas party/comic appreciation night. We did this:

That’s me on the right, don’t I look handsome?

It was so damn funny. That’s a great group of comics over there. If you haven’t been to a show at the Drop, you really are missing out on some VERY funny stuff.

I’m absolutely exhausted, goodnight lovers. I wish everyday my food log looked like this…swimming is amazing:

My finger feels much better. Now the bottom of my foot is bruised something fierce. I’m kind of limping around like a weirdo. When I wasn’t doing anything active, I wasn’t ever hurting! That always runs through my head when I start exercising after taking a break. That’s a dumb line of thought, but it still creeps in your head, ya know? I had plans to go into Chicago tonight with some friends for some Christmas festivities, but I thought that would be too much walking around, so instead I’m heading to a local shindig where I can just relax my feetsies.

I’m having a nice dinner before I go…Herb-roasted chicken is in the oven right now as I’m typing this, I’m using boneless/skinless chicken breasts instead of bone in/skin on thighs….so we’ll see what happens. This recipe includes one of my favorite elementary school insults.

It’s supposed to look like this:

Here’s a picture of how mine turned out tonight:

Not terrible!

Today’s organizing before:

After:

Raok!

I culled the closet of about 20 items to donate to State Street for them to give out to peoples. There’s totally a pair of swim trunks in there.

Today’s crochet was a decent breakthrough! I tried two different ways to try to turn the damn thing over. The one on the right is yesterday’s, and the left is today’s. I think I found out how to do it the right way!

I kept going with it and ended up with this today:

If I didn’t know better I’d say that looks kinda like something that’s being crocheted.

I went swimming again today because of the foot pain. I try to get through as much of this workout as I can in 40 minutes and then jump to the cool down part no matter where I am in the sets.

• Warmup
  • 4 x 25 swim
• Kick Set
  • take 15 seconds rest in between
  • 4 x 25 w/ kickboard
  • 2 x 25 no kickboard
  • 4 x 25 w/ kickboard
  • 2 x 25 no kickboard
• Swim Set
  • 2 x 50 easy -30 seconds rest in between 50s
  • 4 x 50 medium -20 seconds rest
  • 5 x 50 medium-hard -15 seconds rest
• Cooldown
  • 1 x 100 very easy

Last time I did it, I got through the first set of 5×50 in 40 minutes and then had to go to the cooldown. Today I got through the first three sets of the 5×50. PROGRESS!

Also progressing…not biting my fingernails. They are long enough that it hurts sometimes when I touch myself.

HA.

I mean I catch my nail on my other fingers or I scratch my arm like normal and it’s like HOLY SHIT what the Hell is that?

Also, they get dirty. Ew. There will be no pictures of my nails until I grow them out and get them manicured, because trust me, you don’t want to see them until then.

Oh hey, did you know that one gallon of water is approximately seven and a half 16.9 ounce bottles? I wondered that today for you. Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.

What else….hmmmmm OH!

I finished this audio book today:

Lot’s of interesting info in this one, I enjoyed it and I’m going to try to implement a few strategies from the text. The whole point of the book is to get you to say no to more things, but go all in on the things you say yes to.

I’m off to eat my dinner and head out to this par-tay.

Enjoy your night and we’ll see how much I can screw up crochet tomorrow.

NIGHT!

I know I spread myself too thin when I do these willpower months. It’s part of the fun being able to look back and say “damn, that was a busy friggin day and look how much I got done.”

That being said, my body is falling apart on me for sure. Today my lower back really started bugging me and my foot isn’t 100% and my finger still bugs me. I’m really glad I RICE’d up my foot yesterday before heading out to the Christmas festivities.

RICE:

I was able to go disc golfing today without limping, so that was a good thing. It actually felt pretty good afterwards, so I guess that rest/ice really did work.

I forgot to take a picture of my crochet today, I tried to increase the amount of time I did it by feel rather than looking right at it…it didn’t really work out so well. I think I’ll be staring dead at it from now on.

I’m making myself some pizza to take over to my friend’s place for a friendsmas gathering tonight. We usually order pizza from a Pizza Hut or something, so this is the healthier version for me personally. I’m looking forward to getting made fun of for bringing my own food.

I think tomorrow I’m going to just relax and rest up my body. So no exercise tomorrow, but everything else will still need to be done obvi.

Oh Alison Brie, why don’t you just lift that restraining order and we’ll get married like I keep talking with your lawyers about.

Anyway, so much to do still and I’ve gotta be out the door here in like 15 minutes.

I donated 10 dollars to Unicef today for my RAOK.

Everything else is going really well…I think I’m down about 12 pounds. Good start.

Have a great Saturday night everyone!

When I got up, I used my Hamilton Beach Breakfast Sandwich maker that I received last night as a white elephant gift. It was delightful. That’s a damn good egg sandwich. This also happened last night as part of the game Quelf…

Quelf is MUCH more fun than it sounds on paper, trust me.

And yes, in permanent marker, an E was added to the title and an L was covered up. We’re 13.

My white elephant gift was one of these bad boys:

Clark would be proud

It went over pretty well.

Tons of water today as always, crocheting, RAOKing online for lack of human interaction today…and my nails look good better.

Right now I’ve got THIS recipe going in the crockpot. Here’s my before pic:

I didn’t know crockpot cooking was just tossing a bunch of shit into a pot and letting it sit. That’s my kind of cooking!

I’m about to head out to improv rehearsal, then to hang out with my bff Timmy Mac over in the Valparaiso.

I’m two weeks behind on SNL for the first time in probably 5 years? I cannot WAIT to get home and watch. The biggest item on my bucket list is to attend a taping of SNL in New York. It’s impossibly hard to get a ticket. I want to go so badly that I have a standing agreement with my buddy in the entertainment industry that if he’s ever able to guarantee us seats to a show, I will fly us out there no matter how last minute and put us up in a hotel for the night. When I talk about my love for SNL, it’s the real deal.

Oh, that reminds me. My reddit secret santa this year got me this desk calendar:

Pretty sweet!

No working out today as I’m really trying to finish recovering from whatever the heck these injuries/pains are. Everything feels even better today, and sleep is a HUGE benefit. Can’t keep burning the candle at both ends.

I know it’s only been like 10-12 days or so, but I feel like I’m on a pretty good path this time around. The number one goal now is to just make as many habits out of these daily activities as possible. So they stick. FOREVER.

I feel generally more upbeat and more energetic now than I have in quite a while, all good things.

I’m out the door, enjoy your Sunday and if you want to play the home game of this blog…it’s really easy. Start with one thing. Like reading one chapter of a book…switching out one 22 minute Netflix episode for 22 minutes of preparing your lunch for tomorrow so you don’t eat unhealthy crap at lunch…something…anything. Just get started. :)

With the holiday coming up I’ve been preoccupied with shopping for the loved ones. Plus we’re still trying to take advantage of the not too crappy weather to get a little more work in before it really starts coming down on us…so yeah, it’s getting hard to make time for everything! If anything gets left off the list, I make sure that the eating healthy/drinking water/exercising part of things is still going strong. The flossing and listening to a chapter a day of a book is super easy now that it’s routine, and I don’t bite my nails anymore. The Raoking and crocheting is harder to squeeze in because I forget about it until it’s way late at night. I’m forgoing the crochet for the next two days so that I can make a very crafty gift (THANKS HG TV!) for my family’s white elephant exchange on Christmas Eve. I figure trading craft for craft for the next few days isn’t too terrible. Plus this gift I’m making is more time consuming that I thought it would be. I shall post pictures after it gets into the hands of the person it’s going home with.

Hint:

I went to the gym to swim today. I was about to jump into the pool when I was told that I couldn’t swim today due to the kids class occupying the pool for the rest of the day. I checked the times for lap swimming today, but failed to read the bottom of the printout where the blackout days are listed. So that was a big ole waste of time. That is the MOST frustrating thing, when I plan time for an activity but I can’t do it because of my own stupidity. So I came home and got on the treadmill and lifted weights in my basement like some kind of weirdo.

I don’t have a finished basement and I don’t really enjoy spending too much time down there, especially because it smells musty and feels like I’m breathing moldy air.

Eventually I’d love to put one of these bad boys somewhere:

That would be sweet.

Oh man, check this out:

Traditional home gym design by denver general contractor Pinnacle Mountain Homes

My dream is to build a pole building on my property with a gym/endless pool setup on one side, and a rec/party/bar/home theatre on the other. If I ever do that, you guys are all invited to hang out.

For now, I’m remodeling my bathroom this winter. I’ve decided to start with that since my bathroom is currently tiny and ugly, and I’ve lived with it for a few years now. No mas! I’m expanding it into the third bedroom, and the one feature that I will have is a shower with a rainfall shower. Everything else can be basic as H E double hockey sticks, but that shower is going to be the bomb-diggity.

Alright, back to my craft.

Also, I’m down 15 pounds. FUN.

Taking a break for the 23-25.

Enjoy your family time. I know I will.

That’s me.

I haven’t been sleeping, my back has gotten progressively worse since December 20th. I can’t sit comfortably or lay comfortably or stand comfortably or anything comfortably.

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon to see what in the absolute hell is going on with my stupid back. Probably this:

I was miserable today at work and it’s not getting any better now that I’m home. I’m trying to just relax and find a position that doesn’t make me want to kick a toddler.

This blows goats.

I’m still trying to eat healthy and drink water, but tonight I’m going to self medicate with my friend Jack, because as the old saying goes, “A bad back feels better with Jack.”

That’s not a real saying. I don’t care, I’m having a cocktail. I’m also going to try to sleep with a pillow between my knees because that’s what Google said to do. If I trust Google to find me good Chinese food in a strange town, then I’ll trust it with my sleeping positions.

So bear with me while things are on hold until I don’t have a constant pain in my vertebrae. Thanks :)

I have a “sprained or bulging disc” that has created a bone spur on my vertebrae that is pushing into a nerve in my lower back.

I haven’t had a good nights sleep in a week or two.

I’m following my doctors orders to rest, ice, and repeat.

Ice…ohhh baby….ice

It’s a pretty constant pain, so it never really goes away, and I get headaches and other aches from it…so it’s just a barrel of no fun top to bottom.

It’s going to get better, but it’s going to be another week or so before I can even get back in the pool.

On the bright side, I’ve caught up on plenty of movies and TV shows that I didn’t have time for over the summer. Wolf of Wall Street was insane!

I’m also making my current 5×6 bathroom into a 9×6 bathroom. Construction starts next Monday!

Since my washer/dryer is downstairs, adding a laundry chute is key. I realize now that it’s spelled wrong on my diagram. Shit.

I’m still about to get around and do things from time to time like have a nice New Year’s Eve dinner with some friends, emcee a fundraiser for a friend battling cancer, and sit at work for a few hours here and there. I’ll get back to 100% hopefully sooner than later, but right now i’m just taking it a day at a time. 2015 has started off weird, that’s for sure.

I did post a stand up shot to reddit the other day and it hit number one on that subreddit, which was pretty sweet. It was this one:

I’ll check in with you guys soon, have a great first full week of 2015! Do something awesome!

As this CLEARLY hilarious graphic illustrates, it’s been about 8 months since we’ve talked.

How’s the job? How about that gun your grandpa left you with specific instructions not to pull the trigger? How about your excitement level that my blog is back in regards to the direction of “up”?

Fired? I thought so.

My neck is better. I’ve lost about 35 pounds. Work is in full swing. Improv is off for the summer. I didn’t pick crochet back up after my hand started working again.

I started this blog as a bunch of willpower challenges that took things to extremes for laughs and maybe a little bit to better myself. Now that I’m learning what muderation moteration moderishin moderation is…things have been better. I still cocktail it on the weekends but I no longer eat crap food or if I do, I limit it to about 300-500 calories at a time. That’s where the 35 pounds have gone in the past 2 months.

I’ve been listening to a bunch of podcasts/audio books about self improvement and they’ve really helped me. SO…I thought…why not just update once a week for about an hour….a recap of my week and what I’ve done and what I’m trying these days to be more productive, more successful, and a better person.

So that’s what I’m going to do. For 6 weeks, once every week…I’m just going to post about the new things I’ve been trying, specifically the success or failure I’ve experienced with them in my effort to be the best me I can be.

Here’s the first thing that I’ve tried. I highly recommend it:

I mean, there’s SLIGHTLY more to it than that. First, I don’t see the point of making something all organized and nice when in less than 24 hours I’m just going to mess it all up again. LEAVE THE DAMN BED MESSY AND JUST CRAWL BACK IN…it saves time, it’s easy, you don’t have to think about it, and no one is going to see it anyway.

ORRRRRRRRRRR

Get up in the morning and before you do literally anything else, just make your bed. It takes what? 1 minute? So you mean to tell me that in the very first minute upon waking for that entire DAY, you’ve ALREADY accomplished something? You already get to check something off as a “yup, I did something today”? You get an accomplished feeling within 60 seconds of getting out of bed?

This might set off a chain reaction. You might start earning all these little daily “wins” that started with having made your bed in the morning. I’ve been doing it for about a week after 34 years of not making my bed. I’ll tell you what…my favorite part is coming home to a nicely made bed. I get a nice calm feeling at night walking into my room and seeing the bed is made. Instead of ending my day feeling like i’m disorganized, it helps calm me down and let me prep for a great night’s sleep.

Try it. It takes 1 minute. It’s had a very positive impact on me. Let me know what you think.

See you next week!

Good to be back!!

I made my bed every day this week and in my opinion, it really does make a difference as to how I start my day. I feel more productive and I get more things done. Making my bed sets off a chain reaction of good habits and routines that get me from healthy task to healthy task.

I’m going to try meditation tomorrow morning after I make my bed. I’ve been listening to Tim Ferris’s podcast a lot lately (He’s the author of The Four Hour Workweek. Great book.) Two things that have crept up when listening have been that successful people read books and successful people meditate.

I’m going to just sit tall for 5 minutes in the morning after I make my bed while the dog is outside doing her business. Wanna join me? Here’s all it is:

Beginning guide to meditation

I’m also starting the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Because I’m a people, and I want to be highly effective, dammit.

My friend Cary and I are going to read one habit per week and then meet to discuss how we are going to implement that habit in our lives and then meet again to discuss how we implemented that habit and how we are going to implement the NEXT habit. It’s gonna be highly effective.

I’ve also put together my short term and long term goals that I’m trying to keep an eye on. I printed out a list and put it on my refrigerator, just to just keep them in my mind.

Oh yeah, we recorded the movie podcast this morning…so that’s going up tomorrow, but if you are interested in listening to some of the past episodes here’s the link:

Go Flix Yourself

If you wanted to see a video of me drinking and complaining about stuff for fun, here’s a link for that:

Jackin’ Off With Ben

So that’s my week. I hope you have a great one. Make a goal for this week and then crush it and then tell me about it if you want. I’d love to hear it.

SMOOCHES.

Ben

Oh, hey there. I hope everything is going well in your world. Me? Oh, thanks for asking, you’re sweet.

Here’s the update…

I got myself one of those girlfriend things. She’s read the entire blog. She STILL wants to date me. I have no idea how much she drinks, but it’s gotta be constant.

Really though, she’s fucking great.

Also, I’m down a bunch of weight because I decided to not be a big ole piece of shit and try to lose 1000 pounds in 2 days. This fitbit thing has really helped, but it’s all calories in/calories out.

I’ve decided that because the charity shows at the Little Theatre (bigcomedylp.brownpapertickets.com) have been going so well, and life is pretty great at the moment, that I’d transition this blog into keeping track of my 2016 goal.

I’m going to watch 366 movies this year (It’s a leap year after all). I’m going to update this about once a week to give a short review of the movies I’ve watched. The catch is that these are all movies that I’ve never seen. I’m using it as an opportunity (as a self-proclaimed movie buff) to see movies that I’ve always wanted to see, but never have.

The crazy thing about trying to watch a movie a day is that if the average movie I watch is 120 minutes, that means at the end of the year I will have spent one entire month of my life watching films. In order to not become a tub of shit during this challenge, I’m going to watch a ton of them on my treadmill in the basement, breathing in that completely healthy basement air that totally is fine and doesn’t contain anything weird from those black pock marks on my block walls.

SO if that interests you, good! If not:

So, I made a list of about 280 movies that I’ve never seen, including ones that are coming out in 2016. Here’s how I came up with the list:

I made a Google Doc of movies that I’ve never seen before including releases that will be out in 2016. I started with the IMDB top 250 and picked about 100 from that list that I’ve never seen and am interested in seeing. Then I went through the filmography of some of my favorite actors and directors and cherry picked the ones that I think I’d be interested in from their catalogs. After that I went to Wikipedia and looked at all the movies they have listed coming out in 2016.

Here’s my list:

BEN’S LIST OF MOVIES HE WILL SEE IN 2016 BECAUSE HE’S TOTALLY NOT A LIAR

I left about 60 spots empty because I’m sure something will just catch my fancy and I’ll watch it.

I really really am going to watch a ton of movies on my treadmill, but other times I’ll binge on the weekends or go to a double feature one night just to get some in. I’m looking forward to this :)

So far I’ve seen these ones:

The Visit – Return to form for M. Night Shamalamadingdong. He knocks this one out of the park. I was REALLY happy with this movie. One that you just need to see to see why.

Mac & Me – We made fun of this on Jan 2 for a “podcastathon” that eclecnet.com put on….the good news is that they raised like 1000.00 bucks for charity. The bad news is that we sat through the Coca-Cola/McDonald’s sponsored Mac & Me. That movie makes zero sense and the puppet/aliens are nightmare fuel.

I don’t know, can we make it creepier somehow? Like, dress it up in a teddy bear?

Yup, that’ll do it.

Tracers – I wanted to try to get a nap in on Sunday and I thought Taylor Lautner’s acting would do it. I made it through 88 minutes of that drivel and caught some good zzz’s right as the credits started rolling. What a shitty actor.

Daddy’s Home – I love me some Will and Mark. I LOVE The Other Guys. This one is pretty passably funny, I just don’t know why they did some of the slapstick stuff. The second half of the movie is better than the first, and there’s a sweet cameo near the end.

Sicario – SLOW BURN….totally worth it. I love Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio del Toro in this movie so so so much. Fun fact, Benicio del Toro’s name loosely translated is:

Old Boy (the original) Two words: Mind Fuck. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie stylistically, and I didn’t mind reading the subtitles.

So there we go. I’m off to dinner and to watch another movie…so stay tuned! :)

As of the 19th of this brand new year, I’ve watched 25 movies. I’m damn happy with my progress. I’m going to have to keep a pretty frenetic pace if I’m going to hit my goal of 366 movies in 366 days. 30.5 movies a month needs to be the average (obviously)…but I know I’m not going to be able to keep that up once the fambiz picks up in the summer/fall…so I’m going to do my best to average 40 a month for at least Jan-April.

I was in the Bahamas for vacation from the 9th to the 16th, but it rained and was overcast every. friggin. day.

Bad for vacation. Good for movie watching!

My complete list is here: THE LIST

Of the 18 movies I watched since the first posted post I posted, I’d say that Argo and Straight Outta Compton were the best by far. Concussion, Black Mass, and The Graduate were movies that surprised me by how much I enjoyed them. Heist and Hitman: Agent 47 were just abominations.

Personal favorite from this batch: The Graduate.

Off to watch another!

Yeah, it’s a pretty great update I’ve got for you since January. Get it? Update? Weekend Update? Where are you going? I thought we were friends?

ANYWAY.

For those of you that don’t know what the heck is happening, I’ve challenged myself to watch 366 movies in 2016 that I’ve never seen before.

It’s insanely hard to watch this many movies AND constantly update my blog regarding how I feel about them, however I did take the time to create a Google Sheet rather than a Doc so that I can track not only the movies I’ve watched, but list where I’m ranking them best to worst.

So far, there have been 82 days in 2016 and I have watched 97 movies.

I know. You’re super impressed and a little turned on. That’s normal.

Here’s the link to the Google Sheet if you care. CLICK HERE. On the left it’s movies that I know exist that I haven’t seen. The column in red are the ones I’ve already seen with the order in which they were seen listed parenthetically.  They are in descending order of awesome.

I’m going to break down a few that I have actual opinions about, because there are quite a few where I simply thought: “Well that was a movie.”

Here’s the bottom ten:

As you can see, Mac and Me is dead last, as it should be.

“But Ben”, you might be asking, “what’s so bad about an Alien befriending a small boy in the 1980’s? E.T. the Extra Terrestrial and His Adventures on Earth was SO good.”

Yes. Yes it was. You may remember a scene where some kids wheel down a ledge like this one from E.T:

It won’t embed, so HERE it is.

Wow, what a great scene.

Now here’s a scene where a kid wheels down a ledge in Mac and Me:

You know what, nevermind…that scene is pure gold.

The other crap movies at the bottom of the list include:

The remake of Point Break, which manages to make Ice Cube’s XXX: State of the Union look like an Oscar winner.

Yup.

Hitman: Agent 47 which manages to have the largest inverse relationship from movie poster awesomeness to actual movie crappiness:

Tracers starring Taylor Lautner who’s Google search results turn these up for good reason:

Again, it’s funny because it’s true…not the being dead thing…just the alpaca thing:

Unfinished Business…which was pitched like this:

Studio Guy doing coke 1: “Vince Vaughn being Vince Vaughn, as I don’t know, something with business?

Studio Guy doing coke 2: “Yeah but he’s gotta be in not America so we can play on him being Vince Vaughn not in America.”

Intern: “This script is completely unfunny, plus it’s unfinished at best. It has no business being a movie”.

Studio Guys doing coke: (in unison) “THAT’S WHAT WE’LL CALL IT! UNFINISHED AT BEST!”

Intern: “Christ, at least call it Unfinished Business, also, I bet Dave Franco isn’t doing anything right now”

He wasn’t

So those movies were shit, but I DID see some FANTASTIC ones as well:

I remember seeing Aliens when I was SUPER young, and I wanted to introduce it to my girlfriend, and after the first 10 minutes I just could not remember ANYTHING that was coming and everything was surprising and fantastic to me, so I put it back on the list.

Shaun the Sheep is a stop motion movie (made by the same people that do Wallace and Gromit) that has no dialogue. It’s utterly delightful. If you’ve never seen anything done by them…I feel like if you like the following gif, you’ll like Wallace and Gromit:

Concussion was underrated this year and Will Smith was great, but Albert Brooks just friggin nailed his role. I don’t know who I love more, Albert Brooks or Stanley Tucci as far as actors that usually snag these little bit parts that end up as the best parts of the film. I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone who’s on the fence about seeing Concussion, so I won’t. Albert Brooks has the best line of dialogue (that he delivers perfectly, of course) from any movie in 2015 and I’ll fight you in the parking lot if you disagree.

Rush surprised me so much. Ron Howard has some great movies, but DAMN. I’d venture to say it’s the most underrated movie of all 97 films I’ve seen this year. It wasn’t nominated for any Oscars, but hey…remember this dude from Inglorious Basterds?

He should have been nominated for Best Actor, even though I looked it up and they were pushing him to be nominated for Best Supporting, which is bullshit. It was a two man show with him and Thor in a car, and he was magnificent.

The other movie that really surprised me with how much I truly enjoyed it was M. Night Shamalamadingdong’s The Visit.

“Ohhhh spooky…I wonder what the twist is…blah blah blah” NOPE…not even close to being a let down, this movie was expertly done and I LOVE the direction it took the entire time.

That’s the update for now. Thanks for reading. If you read the list and you think there’s something random and weird out there that I haven’t already seen, reach out why don’t you?

It’s been 4 months and 5 days since I’ve posted about attempting to watch 366 movies that I’ve never seen before in the 2016 calendar year! How am I doing, you might wonder if you were the type of person to actually click on the Facebook link to this blog (or you are one of the like 3 holdovers from willpowerthru (looking at you Harbin77)…

I’m WELL, friends, and I’m straight up giving this challenge a run for it’s money. As of today, I’ve seen 195 movies that I’ve never seen before…and it’s the 207th day of the year. Considering it’s our busy season at work I’m feeling pretty good.

Here’s something: I cannot tell you how many times the run time of a movie 100% influences if I watch that movie or not. When you are doing a challenge like this, SURE, the goal is to see classics you’ve never seen before. Sure, old movies aren’t necessarily longer than current films:

BUT, classic movies tend to be. Every time I sit down to watch a movie, I realize I’m behind on my count even by a few movies. That means I end up sitting through two movies like the llama from Twilight’s Tracers (1 hour, 34 minutes) and Sacha Baron Cohen’s worst movie by FAR The Brothers Grimsby (1 hour 23 minutes) rather than an actual classic like Seven Samurai (3 hours 28 minutes).

Not all classics are long. Twelve Angry Men (1 hour 36 minutes) and Godard’s Breathless (1 hour 27 minutes)  prove that, but rather than do the research at the end of a day at work I tend to just find something mindless that fits the bill. Now that I’m more than 1/2 way done with the challenge, I’ll be taking more care in selecting my 90 minute filler movies considering both of the films I just mentioned are available for 2.99 rental and for free online. That’s my bad and I’m a terrible person with herpes and I don’t think your newborn is cute.

Since last time, I do have a shift in the top ten and bottom ten of the films that I’ve seen this year. Here’s both:

Bottom 10 4 months ago and now:

Four months ago:

Now:

I have to say, The Brother’s Grimsby

is quite possibly the worst attempt at comedy in the last 10 years at least. It’s 100% painful to watch. There is only one actual joke in the entire film that made me laugh. Here’s the trailer for the movie that you probably should not watch, but if you decide to do that that LAST joke of the trailer is the joke:

Remember, that was a trailer for a COMEDY. It’s cut well and it makes you think that it’s going to be a great movie…but if you were to watch it again and ask where the jokes really are….crickets.

Here’s the joke if you were smart enough not to watch it (the trailer OR the movie):

“I understand why you love guns so much. I mean, it completely detaches you from the guilt of your actions!”

Now, reading that quote without Sacha Baron Cohen saying it isn’t all that funny, so it REALLY fits in with the rest of this shit movie…BUT if you were to cut to 2:24 of that abortion of a movie’s trailer above…it’s actually funny in context…but don’t worry! The few remaining seconds of the trailer give you exactly the rest of that joke so you don’t ever need to see the movie FEATURING TWO TRAINED ACTORS CRAWLING INSIDE A FEMALE ELEPHANT’S VAGINA, A MALE ELEPHANT PUTTING HIS ELEPHANT DICK INSIDE THE FEMALE’S (WITH A CAMERA INSIDE) VAGINA SO YOU CAN SEE THE TWO LEAD ACTORS OF THE FILM GET COVERED WITH MALE ELEPHANT CUM.

It’s utterly atrocious.

Now for the good news!

Four month ago top 10:

Today’s list:

The biggest change here is a movie clearly no one took the time to see when it came out because it bombed hard…the trailer makes it look simply like a cameo filled throwaway movie…but the trailer shows literally none of the funniest scenes from this film which is an underrated GEM:

POPSTAR

Another thing I’ve realized is that I rank every movie 1 to 366 as soon as I see them. I slide in the latest movie wherever I think it should go immediately after seeing it. I’m going to sit down and reorder things this weekend. The top and bottom 20 probably won’t change, but Christ…you tell me what’s better: Monster’s University, or Lawless? Bernie or Swiss Army Man? IT’S HARD!!

Here’s a few takeaways from this that might actually apply to you even if you don’t watch a lot of movies:

1. If you say “I really like thrillers/horror films” and you haven’t seen M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit because he’s fallen off lately. Fuck off. It’s absolutely amazing and a 100% return to form for him.
2. You have kids and have run out of kids’ movies you will also enjoy to shove at them? The Boxtrolls, you’re welcome.
3. You love the movie Scream and can’t believe they’re never had something similar since then? Final Girls
4. Get the Gringo. You didn’t hear about it because Mel Gibson is weird, but if weird ass Tom Cruise starred in it, it would have done 100 million.
5. Blue Ruin. As a dude that loves revenge movies, this isn’t John Wick…it’s a slow burn/realistic tale of what you might do if everything was taken from you. It’s perfect.

I will end this post with movies I have stumbled upon during this challenge that I think are absolutely worth seeing but if you don’t watch a lot of movies you might want to steer clear, these would be for the people that normally watch a couple films a week and are up on what’s going on but maybe just missed these films because, you know, you AREN’T WATCHING A MOVIE A DAY FOR A YEAR:

1. Tangerine
2. Dope
3. Green Room
4. Bone Tomahawk
5. The Guard
6. Director’s Cut (this isn’t out yet for rent)

That’s it for now. I have a whole ‘nother idea for my next blog based on a “shit remake” that actually was a great prequel because people just don’t pay attention. I’m going to try to write that next week. In the meantime, check out Go Flix Yourself to hear me and my buddy Brad talk movies and quiz our friends a la Doug Loves Movies.

GOODNIGHT!

Turns out, watching 366 movies in 366 days doesn’t leave an abundance of time to blog. I did want to let the internet know that I’m not a failure (at this one specific thing). So here we go: I DID IT! I saw 366 movies this year that I had never seen before! They didn’t have to be new movies, just new to me. Documentaries counted as long as they were full length, and I saw Hamilton, Spam-a-lot, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime on stage that I did not include but probably could have as they were just as culturally significant/lengthy as any movie I did see this year. I probably spent about $2,000.00 in rental fees/movie ticket purchases, gained 50ish pounds, and my girlfriend probably hates me. But hey, I did it!

The goal was to see a full length movie for every day of the year. I didn’t have to literally watch one everyday, so long as I caught up if I missed. The most movies I watched in one day was 7, and the longest I went without watching a movie was 16 days in a row during my peak busy time at work. Thankfully, it worked out that I didn’t need to marathon a ton of movies the last few days of December as I kept up pretty well throughout the year.

So what are the take-aways from this venture? Was it worth it? Would I do it again? Would I change the approach?

Yes, Maybe, No

My list is made up of some truly delightful films – Arrival (ranked 55th on my list) to Zootopia (ranked 27th), to the abysmal dumpster fires -Assassin’s Creed (ranked 365th) to Zoolander 2 (ranked 353)…and everything in between (*batteries not included – ranked dead center at 183)…I watched an enormously wide range of films. Sifting through my list after it was all said and done, I discovered my previously hidden preferences for genres (turns out I fucking love westerns and nothing beats a great horror film)

In order to make it work, I watched a LOT of movies broken up into 2 or 3 viewings. I’m sure when the Coen Brothers were directing Blood Simple (Number 94), their dream audience was enjoying their masterpiece broken into 4 viewings over 3 days.

Sorry guys, I did love it though!

The shortest movie I watched (that I still counted) was Safety Last (ranked 66th) with Harold Lloyd from 1923. That clocked in at 1 hour 13 minutes. Fitting that the most famous scene in that film is Harold hanging from a clock face:

The longest film was the last film I saw, Seven Samurai (ranked 45 on my list) at 3 hours 28 minutes long.

Safety Last was also the oldest movie I saw, followed by Chaplin’s The Gold Rush -1925 (ranked 51).

I kept a running list of the movies I watched on a Google Sheet, and I placed each movie into the list after I watched it, trying to place it in order of how much I liked it compared to the other films on the list. Of course, as this went on it became increasingly difficult. I did reorder some things at the end of the year to adjust my feelings on movies as they sat in my brain over time. I think the movie that jumped the most was either The Babadook (started at like 70, moved up to #25 on my list), or Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’, which I jumped to number 3 overall after watching some other Hitchcock films.

These are the 25 movies that I enjoyed the most out of the 366. That’s how I ranked everything. Enjoyment. Not cultural impact, or technical perfection, just enjoyment. One factor I know weighed very heavily on my decision making was expectation of enjoyment to actual enjoyment. I tried to set the bar low for everything so I could go into every movie with a clean slate mentality, but with movies like Seven Samurai and Citizen Kane, it’s very hard to tell yourself “I’ll just take this for what it is”, when the whole world has told you for 30 years that THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE. So here’s my top 25…oh yeah, the number in parentheses is the order in which the movie was seen. As you can see, The Visit was the first movie I watched and Platoon was 362nd, but they both made the top 10.

12 Angry Men is the movie I enjoyed the most this year. (you can click HERE to see the full list of all the films if you are indeed that interested)

and of course, here are the bottom 25, also known as literally 2 days of my life I’ll never get back:

This list is from the bottom up as it’s a screen shot of my Google Sheet, so Mac and Me is the worst movie I saw (possibly the worst movie ever made). Also, before you break out the pitchforks, that’s the Point Break remake, and 2015’s Heist (not the Gene Hackman film from like 2000). Controversy might be involved with Zoolander 2 and War Dogs inclusion in my bottom 25 as some people liked those movies. You people are wrong. Those movies are dogshit. Zoolander Number 2 is VERY appropriately named, and anyone that thinks War Dogs is a good movie is possibly mentally feeble.

One thing that got my blood boiling about War Dogs is the trailer. The trailer for this movie looks GREAT. The person that cut this trailer is damn talented. This movie is boring drivel. This is the trailer:

I’ve never felt more lied to after leaving a movie.

These next few lists are more for me than you few thousand people that are reading this (just kidding, hi mom!), but I will start off with one list that you should take under advisement if you enjoy really good movies but don’t want to waste your time if it might be a gamble. Here are 5 movies you will enjoy if you watch them. You don’t need to know anything going into them, just find them, put them on, and enjoy them:

1. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
2. Captain Fantastic
3. The Boxtrolls
4. The Fundamentals of Caring
5. Sing Street

alllllrighty. Here are some lists from this year (all in order from most (1) to least (10))

Most underrated movies I saw this year:

1. Popstar
2. Rope
3. The Nice Guys
4. Get the Gringo
5. Stretch
6. Dope
7. The Visit
8. The Guard
9. Midnight Special
10. Tangerine

Top five westerns I saw this year (I didn’t know westerns were my favorite genre before this challenge!):

1. Hell or High Water
2. High Plains Drifter
3. Slow West
4. Bone Tomahawk
5. In a Valley of Violence

Top 10 horror films:

1. The Visit
2. The Thing
3. 10 Cloverfield Lane (possibly a thriller and not straight up horror but who cares)
4. The Babadook
5. Green Room
6. The Autopsy of Jane Doe
7. Hush
8. Don’t Breathe
9. Lights Out
10. They Look Like People
    (Honorable Mentions: The Conjuring, The Invitation, Sinister, Tales of Halloween, Krampus)

Movies I would place a large bet that you haven’t seen but I enjoyed a LOT.

1. Director’s Cut  Penn from Penn and Teller made this via Kickstarter and I baked it so I got to attend the Chicago Premiere. It’s not like any movie you’ve ever seen and it’s REALLY funny
2. Stretch This movie from 2014 has B movie written all over it: “A hard-luck limo driver struggles to go straight and pay off a debt to his bookie. He takes on a job with a crazed passenger, whose sought-after ledger implicates some seriously dangerous criminals.” I stumbled on it on Netflix looking for a quick movie to breeze through. Patrick Wilson is hilarious and it’s waaaay better than it should have been.
3. Rope Everyone is over here talking about Rear Window as Hitchcock’s best thriller. Not even close. Even the director had his doubts “Alfred Hitchcock called Rope an ‘experiment that didn’t work out”. I found Rope to be utterly fascinating with Hitchcock’s use of long takes and hiding cuts via clever editing, and Jimmy Stewart was amazing.
4. Tangerine This movie was shot completely on an iPhone and I knew that going in, but I swear you can’t tell. Great story, guerrilla filmmaking at it’s best, striking visuals, just a cool movie.
5. Roller Town I would call this David Wain lite. It was so over the top and ridiculous. Not a great movie overall, but some of the scenes were so ‘out of nowhere’ funny, I laughed incredibly hard and it’s worth mentioning here.
6. A Perfect Getaway Steve Zahn, Chris Hemsworth, Timothy Olyphant, Milla Jovovich star in this 2009 murderous thriller which feels like two movies thrown together which isn’t a bad thing in this case. Caught me off guard with how much I enjoyed it.

The most overrated movies I saw this year (I’m not linking to these because if you want to find out more, you do the work)

1. Zoolander 2 – Much hyped sequel that was just terrible
2. The Brothers Grimsby – “From the creator of Borat, Bruno, etc” This move felt like it was trying to be shitty on purpose.
3. Hail, Caesar – A series of loosely interconnected stories (some really entertaining) that had no purpose other than to be thrown together somewhat hastily to try to create a plot.  I would have rather seen Channing Tatum’s movie within the movie by a LONGshot.
4. The Lobster – Beats you over the head with it’s weirdness in a way that Swiss Army Man never does.
5. The Witch – I hated this movie because it was marketed as THE BEST horror movie EVER. I don’t know how I would feel about it if I never heard anything about it going in, but the marketing tainted this movie much like War Dogs. This movie is not a horror movie, this movie is an artsy-dark New England folk tale. Ohhh you like it? Hot take: Good for you, go watch Rear Window and tell me it’s not boring. #RopeIsMuchBetterThanRearWindow

One last list for you: My favorite thrillers (another genre I didn’t really know I loved until this challenge)

1. Rope (of course)
2. North by Northwest
3. Blue Ruin
4. Midnight Special
5. Cop Car
6. The Mist
7. Contagion
8. Cape Fear
9. Prisoners
10. Let me in

Here are a couple movies I saw this year that deserve more attention than they got when they came out for sure:

Rush, The Lincoln Lawyer, Concussion, The Adjustment Bureau, Eye in the Sky, Final Girls, Eddie the Eagle, Don Jon, The Guard, Moonwalkers, Man Up, St. Vincent, Everest, Charlie Wilson’s War.

Happy 2017 everyone.

My friend and podcast producer came up with this awesome graphic (we’ll change it to 244 days to reflect 100% accuracy, but this is the shit!)

This blog has gone from random willpower challenges, to a movie challenge, to now the biggest challenge of my life. Losing 100 pounds in 7ish months.

This blog will accompany a weekly podcast about the challenge.

Podcast Bio:

My Name is Ben Konowitz and I bet 17 people a total of $4,148 dollars that I would weigh 100 pounds less at the stroke of 12:00AM January 1st, 2018 than I did 244 days earlier on May 1st, 2017. I weighed in at 324.10 pounds. If I fail, I will owe 244 dollars (one for every day wasted in failure) to 17 people’s designated charity(ies). This weekly podcast will document how well/poorly it’s going with weigh ins and conversations with my co-host/producer Jason Weaver about the struggles/victories of the previous week.

Sound good so far? No? I’m a moron? Fair point.

I’ve been doing this since May 1st for those of you with zero reading comprehension from literally one paragraph ago, so I’m down 33 pounds so far. Based on that weight loss rate, this seems to be very easy. It is of course, not. The first 30 pounds melt off and then it gets difficult as balls. The last 67 pounds. There’s where the challenge is, I tell myself as I begin to cry.

I’ve imposed a 1300-2000 calorie guideline for my eating, with zero exercise thus far as my gout (yes, I’m 35 and I have gout, shut up) is a real issue. I limp around mucho right now as my body is getting used to new long term medication/a huge change in my diet.

I AM excited to start lifting weights and doing cardio to compliment my eating correctly. “ohhh eating correctly, you’re sexy AF.” -me, complimenting my eating correctly.

I’m going to TRY to blog twice a week, and in the month of July I’m going to shoot for everyday as I’m going to do something really fun (at least I think it’ll be fun) I’m going to try to live inside a Men’s Health magazine.

               Sure Why NOT                      

I’ll take the latest issue of Men’s Health, and try to do absolutely everything inside it to see how much of an impact I can make. I’ll be making all recipes, doing all exercises, and trying everything from every article. I’ll be keeping track of how much everything costs/how much time it takes to live like they want you to live for one month. That should be fun/weird.

Stay tuned!